RENTON, Wash. — Pete Carroll is out after 14 seasons as coach of the Seattle Seahawks, responsible for two NFC championships and the only Super Bowl title in franchise history during his long tenure.
The 72-year-old Carroll is moving into an advisory role with the organization, according to a statement from owner Jody Allen on Wednesday.
The Seahawks closed the season with a 21-20 win Sunday at Arizona. They entered the final two weeks with a chance at reaching the playoffs for the 11th time with Carroll in charge, but a Week 17 loss to the Pittsburgh Steelers left them in need of help they didn’t get.
Carroll will step aside as the most successful coach in franchise history but with an unsatisfactory conclusion after several seasons of middling results. He’ll forever be lauded as the first coach to bring the Lombardi Trophy to Seattle with the Super Bowl XLVIII victory over the Denver Broncos.
But Carroll never fully recovered from what happened in the Super Bowl a year later with Russell Wilson’s goal-line interception in the final seconds against the New England Patriots, and the Seahawks never experienced another title that could wash away the memories of what happened in Super Bowl XLIX.
Carroll steps aside with a 137-69-1 record with the Seahawks, whom he led to five NFC West titles and 10 playoff victories.
But the Seahawks plateaued toward the end of Carroll’s time. They finished with a losing record in 2021, made the playoffs at 9-8 in 2022 and were unable to make an expected leap this season to being more of a contender in the NFC West.
Carroll sounded frustrated going into Week 18 about how this season had gone.
“We have a lot of work to do, but the outlook for the future is very positive because of the makeup of the guys, the way they want to work, the way they go about it,” Carroll said. “They just need to be trained and it needs to come back another year where you see all of those guys that make that jump from Year 1 to Year 2 and from Year 2 to Year 3. There’s going to be a real positive movement for our club.”
That future will be under the watch of a different coach, though.
Despite the lackluster final chapter, Carroll’s tenure in Seattle will be viewed as the most successful run since the franchise arrived in 1976. He ushered in a player-friendly environment built around allowing personalities to show within the defined structure of his system. Carroll preached competition but made it fun along the way.
The Seahawks thrived under Carroll with the personalities of Marshawn Lynch, Doug Baldwin and Richard Sherman, for example. They plucked Wilson out of the third round and watched him help the team win a Super Bowl in his second season.
Known for his defensive mind, Carroll created a defense that was the best of its era for multiple seasons and was at the foundation of those back-to-back NFC titles.
But Super Bowl XLIX was a tipping point the Seahawks never truly recovered from. Wilson’s pass that Malcolm Butler intercepted to give the Patriots a 28-24 win eventually led to an unraveling of the core that took the Seahawks to those championship games. As much as Carroll tried several reboots, they never again found that level of talent and chemistry to create a juggernaut of a team.
The Seahawks never advanced past the divisional round of the playoffs after that last Super Bowl trip and were dumped in the wild-card round in three of their last four postseason appearances.
The question will immediately turn to Carroll’s replacement and whether the team tries to stay within the Seahawks family tree or looks to bring in a fresh voice to work with general manager John Schneider. It will be the first time since arriving at the same time as Carroll that Schneider will have complete control over personnel.
Speculation will immediately turn to Dallas Cowboys defensive coordinator Dan Quinn, who served in the same role for the Seahawks during their two NFC championship seasons. Quinn was 43-42 with two playoff appearances and one memorable Super Bowl collapse in his five-plus seasons as head coach of the Atlanta Falcons.
